


Reveille

by dimtraces



Series: The blue man [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Flashbacks, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: Anakin meets a lonely child on a training base, and he remembers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Mentions of child murder, abuse, slavery. This is Star Wars.
> 
> Also, it probably only makes sense in context of The blue man?

He’s been here before, Anakin notices. It’s not just the layout of the base this time, as ingrained as the rhythm of the respirator he still occasionally hears, or the shining durachrome wall plating. It’s not the war bleeding together the edges of his days— _the war is over and he is dead; the war is starting and the force-strong boy is bowing to his Master_ —the stormtrooper legions march and fall and new numbers snap into place like a shark’s teeth.

He’s actually been here before.

This time, there is no muffled crying among the rows upon rows of identical blankets, and the child lies asleep in his cot, but it’s obvious: There he is, the one who talked to him, the other stolen youngling— _they are all stolen, they were all torn from their mothers and he_ slew _them_ —curled up on the bed and his arms wound tightly around himself, mumbling words Anakin can’t make out.

He did not mean to come back here.

_(Leia, two months ago and centuries too old, rewatching the holocall about Ben over and over and over.)_

He didn’t mean to come back—

_(Alone in her room and desolate and screaming.)_

He didn’t mean to—

_(“Just go away! Leave me alone! You took my father and my planet and my mother twice-over, you tried to take Han from me and you grabbed for Luke. You tainted all the dreams that I ever had,” Leia is hissing at him, and Anakin realizes it’s too late to fade away and pretend he hasn’t been watching her sometimes, when he thinks of the daughter he should have known and cannot stay away. It’s too late to pretend he hasn’t felt her grief._

_“When will it be enough, Vader? When? Do you want me to beg? Do you want me to break, like I didn’t when you tortured me over the Death Star plans? Do you want to finish what you started? You have waited for a long time to see me on my knees. Well, congratulations,_ father _, you’ve won.”_

_Leia’s eyes are bright and for one endless—hypocritical—moment, Anakin is afraid that it means more than it does. But no, it’s just the yellow light reflecting off her tears, and no father should ever be this relieved to see his daughter cry._

_“Do whatever you want with me—just give me back my son.”)_

He’d taken her order, and he’d marched _(fled)_ back here: He’s come for Ben.

To return him.

To bring him back, the way his Luke had come to the Master’s lair and talked, unarmed— _disarmed, Anakin’s glove cradling the lightsaber, ready to give it and his son, too, into the hand of his Master_ —small and upright and oh so bright. Luke, who’d remained full of faith in the face of his father’s betrayal.

Luke, who had tried to drag a breathing corpse off the Death Star.

It’s not as easy as Anakin had imagined, of course.

Ben kneels, and he is proud— _“Well done, Lord Vader,” his Master says, and the taste of what he thinks is power blots out the fissures in his heart and the agony where flesh meets rust_ —and he trusts and trains and he is punished and Anakin can do nothing, nothing at all, and when he commands—begs—when he tells the boy to return, he is only talking _at_ him, and Ben does not hear.

There is burning flesh in his nostrils, and Ben has not yet been commanded to wipe out younglings.

Anakin watches, and rages and despairs and flees and paces the corridors, and he remembers Leia’s command. (It’s not penance, he knows, no deed will ever weigh as heavy as the crimes against Padmé’s daughter, but it must be done.) There is no space in those designs for another child.

He didn’t mean to come back here to this room.

He didn’t mean to see the other stolen boy again— _how could he ever have imagined the Empire was just, if others choose to take children from their mothers in the name of reclaiming its glory?_ He didn’t mean to visit him again after hiding the little one’s force presence. It could draw attention to the child _—in another life, the bearded Jedi passes by his hovel, and Anakin chokes on sand in the Jundland wastes years before the Emperor ascends—_ force-sensitive children are a valuable good. It’s too dangerous. He’s failed enough people, _destroyed_ enough people, and he should know better. He does know better. He thought he knew better than to come back.

Vader looms large over everything the First Order does, over everything _Ben_ does. They will know him.

It’s too dangerous to reveal himself.

And yet, he knows he has been here before.

_(He has been here at nine years old, newly motherless among thousands of orphans and crying himself to a lonely sleep in the halls—cold, always too cold—of the Jedi temple. He has looked at all the other children with their identical blankets, all the same as him, and wondered why he should want another one. He has shivered, and kept silent.)_

The child’s knuckles are straining his warm brown skin when he hugs himself, as if he already knows that even this comfort can be taken from him. And yet, he tries. Sleep has a way of loosening you, Anakin remembers, of making you reach for that which you cannot have: Laughter in warm dark eyes, a mother’s kiss. Touch. Anakin has not slept in fifty years.

_(He has been here, armored, at forty: His home a never-ending war with campaigns whose edges he cannot grasp and a purpose that has long since ceased to matter beyond the rivers of blood that drain through his empty mind._

_He has watched the legions of stormtroopers march out for twenty years, and few of them come back. A regrettable loss, but worthwhile. It took him time and two masters to learn, but now he knows._ The good of the whole comes first _. He does not care to see their faces.)_

The child turns over and mutters, “No, Slip, you put the left foot down first and turn your body, see…”

 _(He has been here for all the life he can remember, and knows he will die here. The taste of freedom is a wish-ghost in his mouth. The taste of blood is real. Kitster is prodding the bruises on his cheekbones, whispering, “No, not broken, not yet, come on, Annie, we’ll find that spanner, don’t cry!” and shaking him while in his head, he’s counting the machines he’s fixed today, and coming up short of the number he knows—he knows,_ oh please _—the number he knows will mean he’s so productive that selling him at the average market price of a slave his age would be a net loss for his master._

_He has been here at five, head quiet and bowed and desperately useful and alive.)_

He lightly strokes the boy’s brow to forestall a nightmare that will be coming. It’s almost time for the wake-up call, and the child will need his sleep.

This room and the lonely child within are familiar deep in his bones.

Anakin knows he shall come back.

**Author's Note:**

> Aahh, I'm sorry, I haven't had my head screwed on well enough to write for a while. Better post this while I don't completely hate it yet.
> 
> I didn't plan to ever depart from Finn's pov in this series, and I don't think I will again, but. If you can't break the rules of your own fanfic, what rules can you break? (sort of obliquely) explains part of the name thing anyway that Finn can't know, in that Anakin doesn't want to draw attention to Finn and while staying away completely would do that, too, he empathises too much with Finn's loneliness (whereas there would be no benefit at all in telling Finn his name)
> 
> Thank you for reading! (I genuinely didn't expect so many people to like the other parts of this series, if you're reading this thank you so much!)


End file.
